Feb

Change Agents

Posted by: Sonny in Application, Kingdom, Prayer

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

This is my final (for now) entry on prayer. I intend to keep it short also. We’ll see how that goes.

Prayer is powerful and personal prayer, which has been my focus here lately, is the most powerful. Prayer not only aligns our wills with Gods but actually in many cases gets God on our side. As I have stated and I truly believe, God just does not do some things unless we ask. So we must ask and keep on asking.

But is that all we have to do? Is prayer all that God calls us to do in this world that so desperately needs Him?

11504_1 No it is not. As the quote by Mahatma Gandhi says we must be the change we want to see in the world. We must go beyond prayer into the realm of action. It is okay to “talk” theology but we must also “walk” our theology. Some of us, especially me, find it so very easy to talk about God, to have endless discussions about his Word and all the different theological worldviews and such, and to even pray when I see things I do not like going on. But the Bible is also filled with calls to action.

Spreading the gospel is primary. Praying without ceasing is a necessity. These do have to be primarily achieved by talking. But there are many other commands such as feed the poor, clothe the naked, give to the widows and orphans, and many more that have to have something done, some action taken, other than discussion.

Christ followers are supposed to be change agents. We must, as Gandhi said, be the change, not just try to direct it. There are just too many of us not willing to do much more than show up at church and maybe pray a little.

I believe a real, intense, dynamic, personal prayer life will not only cause us to grow ever closer to the God and Father who loves us but will create in us a love for others that pushes us ever more to “do” things; to become true workers for the Kingdom.

This world does need to change. For that to happen we must first be changed ourselves. And then we must spread that change by our actions.

“Father, please help us to become the agents of change that are so desperately needed right now. Help us “put legs to our prayers”. Please help us, and especially me, “do” something other than “talk” about it. Amen.”

Love you all

Tags: Bible, Church, Discussion, endless discussions, Kingdom, Love, mahatma gandhi, orphans, Personal, Prayer, Theological, Theology, widows, worldviews

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Application, Kingdom, Prayer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 comments so far

Connie

Not much I can add to that. Good post and I agree wholeheartedly. This has not been my greatest day and I don’t feel like thinking, but I did want to let you know I stopped by.

Since we are on the subject of prayer, please keep me in yours. I’ve had a rough couple of days.

Peace and Love to all.

February 1st, 2009 at 7:29 pm

Sonny

Already have been and will continue to pray for you. We heard you were sick.

Thanks for stopping by.

Love you

February 1st, 2009 at 10:23 pm

Nancy M

There are so many ingredients to prayer. I agree that if you are praying to the best of your ability you are on the right track.

When I think of a change agent I think of the volcano that we made in school. We had the volcano on a piece of board and it was quite harmless until the ingredients of the lava began to bepoured in.You could have even mixed all of the powder in the volcano and not had too much of a mess, but the moment the liquid was added–LOOK OUT. Wouldn’t it be great if we could monitor our success in prayer by the reaction we can see–I know to an extent we do see the effects of prayers but if we could really see each aspect of the motion of prayer. To know that we were in the right mind set to set off the reaction desired. To have the mind of Christ everytime we pray would be awesome in itself how that would change us and it would probably change our prayers completely. To pray selfless, honest, incorruptable prayers with the will of God at the center of all that we speak.

Lord I pray to be submissive to your will, honest in all my prayers, willing to be obedient to all that you ask me to do and the courage face up to my short commings.

Love you all

February 2nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm

Shannon Mimbs

Just some thoughts… A teacher of ours (Dr. Land) speaks of the integration of knowing God, being changed by God and then entering into ministry in behalf of others. This is a bit of an oversimplification. However, his model is referred to by many as “Know-Be-Do.” He once said in class that to embrace one or two aspects of the model apart from the third (when dealing with Spirituality) is problematic. To embrace “know” without “be” or “do” would lead to intellectualism. To embrace “be” without “know” or “do” would lead to sentimentalism. To embrace “do” without “know” or “be” would lead to simple activism. There must be an integrated transformation of all aspects – Know (epistemology-faith)– Be (ontology-love)– Do (hope-ethic)… such integrative transformation corresponds with Prayer (know), Love (be) and Mission (do).

I think that our theological reflections must keep in mind God’s desire to have his love proclaimed, embraced, and shared by everyone. The information about God which we receive (via bible study, sermon, book, etc.) has the potential to transform our lives to be more Christlike. However, if that info does not mingle (so to say) with a faith-ful response, surrendered will, Spirit-empowered embrace of God & others, which forms Christlike character within us (personally and corporately as “change agents”) — its potential for transformation seems to be nullified and results in what we call simple “head knowledge.”

February 5th, 2009 at 1:26 am